Also very much worth noting is that TARP, Stimulus 1, 2, etc were all supposed to be one time propositions, not permanent increases to federal spending-- which was 20% under Bush and is now 24% under Baraq.

"Also very much worth noting is that TARP, Stimulus 1, 2, etc were all supposed to be one time propositions, not permanent increases to federal spending-- which was 20% under Bush and is now 24% under Baraq."

Yes. As much as any other force, the Pelosi-Reid-Obama caused the downturn. They passed all the temporary emergency spending. They score it all in the 'before inauguration' category, even the parts that weren't. They went on to make temporary emergency spending levels permanent. (Who could have seen THAT coming??) Then claim they exercised spending restraint, blaming their predecessor. But their predecessor WAS the Pelosi-Reid-Obama congress. They were IN power before they took power. (Bush deserves blame too, but that has already been thoroughly accomplished!)

On top of all that, they describe the spending at 24% of GDP problem as temporary, a glitch in accounting just because GDP happens to be unusually low. But lowered GDP was the policy choice, not some earthquake or meteor that hit us from somewhere unforeseen. Fannie Mae, CRAp, the Fed, the debt, the bubble, the excessiver regulations, the impending tax increases, their fingerprints are all over all of it.

They expressly wanted to give up economic growth for fairness and they got us neither.

Followup to what I wrote 6/1, but it is mind-boggling that Pres Obama, who does all things political, is flying around Wisconsin air space trying to look like Wisconsin recall is not his fault. The biggest vote short of Nov is today. Who knows the outcome... But if the recall effort fails and Obama didn't help, how is that better for him than if it fails and he did help? What will he be saying when he finally does come to Wisconsin, Badger stadium in October: 'Wisconsin, I need your help. I can't do this without you.'

Obama might have done better to follow the advice of the Washington Post's Ed Rogers: "If you are president of the United States and you don't have anything to say, don't have a press conference to say it. If you're the president of the United States and by Thursday it's widely believed you've had one of the worst weeks of your presidency, take Friday off, and specifically avoid having a press conference."-------------------Problem is that he still believes: "Harry, I have a gift."

Mr. President, you have no gift (of oratory that substitutes for leadership). You have policies that suck and people are seeing there is no deity-like figure running the ship.

"That Decade" he now calls it. It was called "the failed economic policies of the last 30 years" - until Bill Clinton took him out to the woodshed.

During 'that decade' of course he includes the recession left over by the Clinton administration. And then it includes the 2 years of disaster when HE, Sen Obama, and Pelosi-Reid-Ellison et al took control of purse strings in congress. If one looked at a growth curve, one would find more than 50 months continuous months of robust growth in between those Dem tainted end posts.

'That decade' brought us:

"huge tax cuts" - Like my friend here, he fails to distinguish between tax RATE cuts which we had and tax revenue cuts that only happened under HIS plan. Revenues in fact grew 35% in 3 years between 2003 and 2006, prior to the swearing in of the Pelosi-Obama congress. That is double digit (almost 12%) annual growth over a sustained period - until voters were bored with growth and pursued loftier goals. Obama: "There is no data that the tax cuts paid for themselves". Yes there is: http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxfacts/displayafact.cfm?Docid=200

"Fewer Regulations" - Really? When were there fewer regulations? The bubble and collapse were a direct result of BUNGLED regulations. CRAp, Fannie Mae, war against domestic energy production etc.

"The wealthiest 1% Americans income grew 275% over the decade." - No they didn't. Income inequality data mixes in a new batch of rich people every year; it doesn't track at all how much any citizen's income rose. Ten years later, FYI, successful people were selling their products and services into a larger and richer world economy. Ten years later at the low end people were either contributing nothing or working plenty hard without increasing the value of what they were producing. That is by definition. If they had dramatically increased the value of what they were producing, they wouldn't be at the low end of income measurement. The main increases in production and productivity come from CAPITAL INVESTMENT. But the end point with the trick data is necessarily measured AFTER Obama and his colleagues had acted to destroy capital investment.

"The economy started to grow 6 months after I took Office and has grown continuously for 3 years since." - That was BEFORE his policies went into effect. Doesn't sound like they underestimated how bad it really was. Unless you agree with he implication of 'Mission Accomplished', "the private sector is doing fine", he is admitting that he has absolutely no idea about how to grow the private sector any faster than 1.9% growth except more of the same and expect a different result.

Thanks to BD for links provided. I will read those over the weekend. I would rather thw Pres be an expert on this than me.

It is a delicate balance between separation and oversight.

I would settle as a matter of principle for Dems in the White House to govern with whatever princples they espoused when those roles were reversed.

How naive of me!

The response ads to a Romney the flipflopper charge keep gettimg easier.

I know about border agent Terry murder and 800 violent crimes inside Mexico, but who died and what taxpayer funds were sqaundered on Dick Cheney's energy task force? I don't recall young Barack the constitutional scholar bucking his party to come to the previous administration's defense.

With all the worries about Egypt and GM not here to point this out, but we can rest assured that Pres Obama's Dir of Intelligence Klapper told us last year that the Muslim Brotherhood is largely secular. Who knew?

By MICHAEL J. BOSKIN President Obama should put Adam Smith's "The Wealth of Nations" at the top of his summer reading list. This was clear after listening to his 54-minute list of economic excuses and policy proposals delivered earlier this month on the campus of Cuyahoga Community College in Cleveland.

At times Mr. Obama suggested that the profit motive is somehow ignoble, an opinion shared by many on the far left. But every student learns in introductory economics class that the pursuit of profits is essential to a successful economy, allocating resources to the use consumers value most.

This is not exactly a new insight. Writing in 1776, Adam Smith noted, "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we can expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest."

The president spent nearly an hour demonizing his Republican opponent Mitt Romney's economic policies and doubling down on his own failed agenda. He called for higher taxes on our most productive citizens and successful small businesses, more government spending and debt, and Washington micromanagement of wide swaths of the economy.

Instead of doubling down, Mr. Obama could have seen his party's 2010 midterm defeat as a message from voters to move to the center, announcing that his vast expansion of government was temporary and necessitated by the financial crisis and deep recession.

That's similar to what President Clinton did after his 1994 midterm rebuke that swept Republicans to control of Congress and led to bipartisan agreement to balance the budget and reform welfare. Mr. Clinton won re-election handily.

Enlarge Image

CloseBettmann/CORBIS

Portrait of Adam Smith by John Kay, 1790..Here are four things the president could have proposed (but didn't) to remove headwinds to growth and instill confidence in the economy:

1) Avoid the 2013 "fiscal cliff," which the Congressional Budget Office says would put us back in recession, by extending all the Bush tax cuts for one year (leaving him free to pursue his tax hikes on the "rich" later).

2) Approve the Keystone pipeline and speed up oil and gas drilling approvals, with appropriate environmental safeguards, back to the levels they were before the 2010 moratorium following the BP oil disaster.

3) Enact long-run entitlement and tax reform with lower rates and a broader base, using the proposals of the Simpson-Bowles Commission—which the president appointed, but has so far ignored—as a starting point for negotiations.

By taking these four steps, the president would have given the recovery a greatly needed boost and encouraged more businesses to invest and hire. He may well look back on this missed opportunity to move toward the middle as the mistake that ultimately cost him re-election.

Mr. Obama constantly reminds us, with justification, that he inherited a recession. But the recession ended over three years ago, while the recovery has been distressingly anemic. He also blames an "obstructionist" Congress. But Democrats had a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate and control of the House his first two years. Republicans couldn't obstruct anything. He's even blamed the Japanese tsunami and the European debt crisis.

Is it any wonder that recent polls show the majority of Americans disapprove of the president's economic policies and are asking why his explosion of spending and debt has done so little good. Mr. Obama claims that when he took office nobody knew just how deep this recession really was. Not so. I and other economists said it was going to be the worst recession in a generation, and immediately after the 2008 election urged him to temporarily set aside his big-government social-engineering agenda, from energy to health-care reform. Whatever their pros and cons, it was the worst possible time to add such a cost burden and uncertainty to the economy. He was mistaken in the hope the economy could withstand his change.

In 2009, 2010 and 2011, the administration forecast average economic growth of 4% in the next two years. But the economy has not had even one quarter of 4% growth during Mr. Obama's stewardship. Rather, our economy has experienced its longest string of consecutive quarters of economic growth below 4% since World War II. Growth has averaged 1.4% in Mr. Obama's first 13 quarters as president.

His record on jobs is just as bad. Mr. Obama's initial forecast claimed unemployment would never reach 8% if his $800 billion stimulus bill passed in early 2009 (as it did) and would now be below 6%. That's off by 3.9 million unemployed workers, millions more if we include those who have given up looking for work.

Perhaps we should not have expected more from the eloquent apostle of hope and change. Mr. Obama had little experience in or respect for the "for profit" part of the economy. Of his one brief sojourn in the business world, he says in his autobiography he felt "like a spy behind enemy lines."

He now says that Mr. Romney's business career—which former President Clinton describes as "sterling"—is not a qualification to be president. How would he know? Before becoming president, he had no executive experience of any kind—private or public.

Mr. Obama's most recent statements reveal a strange disconnect from basic economic reality. In a press conference on June 8 he said, "The private sector is doing fine," adding that we needed more federal spending subsidizing state and local government jobs, where he claims the jobs problem is centered. But according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are 11 unemployed private-sector workers for every unemployed government worker.

Last month Mr. Obama said, "Since I've been president, federal spending has risen at the lowest pace in nearly 60 years." But it turns out he was quoting a blogger who did not count the massive 2009 stimulus spending. Careful administration fact-checking served former presidents well. Is this administration's standard no longer facts but anything on the Internet?

Mr. Boskin is a professor of economics at Stanford University and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. He chaired the Council of Economic Advisers under President George H.W. Bush.

“For the past few weeks, President Bush and members of his administration have traveled the nation to celebrate recent improved economic statistics. Well, I’ve been traveling too, all over this large and diverse state. In cities and suburbs, downstate and upstate, I’ve heard from people who say it’s way too early to claim victory when it comes to our economy,” Obama says in the Democrats’ radio address from June 26, 2004.

“After three dismal years of job-loss, we all welcome encouraging statistics,” Obama acknowledges in the 2004 address. “But for most Americans, the health of our economy is measured in a different and more personal way: If I lose my job, where will I find one that pays as well and offers real benefits? Can I afford health-care coverage on my own, or the cost of sending my children to college? Will I ever be able to save and retire with dignity and security? These are the questions I hear hardworking people asking. For them, the basic rewards of a middle-class life, rewards that we once took for granted, have become an elusive dream.”

1) It's all the golf you can play and as many free vacations as you want. The teleprompter tells you what to say to the crowd and if anybody makes a joke about you, someone calls him a racist!

2) You get a Nobel Peace Prize just for showing up.

3) No matter how much worse black Americans do under you than George W. Bush, Kanye West is never going to say, "Barack Obama doesn't care about black people."

4) You can eat a dog and PETA will still love you.

5) No one seems to find it odd that you simultaneously repeat Harry Truman's famous line, "The buck stops here" -- as you blame George Bush, Republicans in Congress, greedy corporations, the European economy, and even ATM machines for your many, many failures.

6) The Occupy Movement still loves you despite the fact that you've shoveled billions of dollars in taxpayer dollars to Wall Street firms via bailouts and loan programs.

7) You can have a net worth of 11 million dollars, go on multiple 6 figure vacations per year, and hobnob with the wealthiest Americans at swanky 40k a plate fundraisers; yet no one bats an eye when you criticize Mitt Romney for being rich.

8 ) The press doesn't incessantly repeat the body count in Afghanistan in every article about the war, like it did when George Bush was in Iraq.

9) You get to keep Gitmo open, sign on to the Patriot Act, fight in Afghanistan and kill terrorists with drone attacks while leftists complain that you haven't tried to go after Bush for committing "war crimes" because he did the same things.

10) The mainstream press judges you not on what you've done, but on whatever you happen to be saying right this moment, even if it's different from what you were saying yesterday.

11) After creating jobs overseas with stimulus money, you can criticize Mitt Romney for having a Swiss bank account without being laughed at despite the fact you're holding fundraisers in Switzerland, Sweden, Paris and China.

12) The same press that was utterly uninterested in your background when you ran for office in 2008 considers Mitt Romney's religion, what date he left Bain Capital, and how hard his wife worked when she was taking care of their kids much more important than anything you did over the last 3 1/2 years as President.

13) You can simultaneously block the keystone pipeline and ANWR while you hold up offshore drilling in the Gulf and demonize oil companies, yet claim with a straight face that you're trying to reduce gas prices.

14) Despite the fact that you're conducting war across the globe and have never served in the military, nobody calls you a chickenhawk.

15) Even though your administration helped kill 300 people with guns, including an American citizen, gun control advocates have zero interest in getting to the bottom of it.

16) You have the single most important job on earth and yet, most people seem to be thrilled that you're spending more time campaigning for reelection than you do working.

17) The mainstream media is much more concerned with the possible racism or bad motives of anyone questioning you than it is with whether your policies actually work.

18) No matter how much of an utter failure you are, most black Americans feel compelled to pretend you're not a disaster because they're afraid everyone will judge them by how incompetent you turned out to be.

19) You have a National Debt Charge Card with a limit of "Infinity" and you're not scared to use it.

20) Your biggest accomplishments so far after killing Osama Bin Laden are ending the manned space program, having the longest string of over 8% unemployment of any President since WWII, putting more Americans for food stamps than any other President in history, killing the work requirements in welfare, giving up on stopping illegal aliens, adding more debt in three and a half years than Bush did in eight, and decimating America's health care system with the least popular entitlement program in history. Yet, you still have a chance to be reelected. It doesn't get any better than that.

Charles Murray at the American Enterprise Institute's Ideas blog, July 18:

President Obama's horrendous political gaffe last week—"You didn't build that"—triggered the same reaction I had when he insisted on pushing through Obamacare. Then, I had the creepy feeling that I was living in an occupied country. American politics didn't work that way. Neither Democrats nor Republicans had ever forced through a transformative piece of legislation without substantial bipartisan support. A major American politician had never (to my knowledge) been indifferent to the kind of voter sentiment so clearly expressed in the Massachusetts senatorial election.

"You didn't build that" is another example of the president's tone-deafness when it comes to the music of the American culture. The phrase is not taken out of context. It didn't come after a celebration of the inventiveness and risk taking of individual Americans that has made this country great. The president gave the mildest of acknowledgements to the role of the individual, followed by a paragraph of examples that cast American history as a series of collective accomplishments. . . .

It is as if a Dutch politician—an intelligent, well-meaning Dutch politician—were somehow running for the American presidency, but bringing with him the Rawlsian, social-democratic ethos that, in the Netherlands, is the natural way to talk about a properly run society. We would listen to him and say to ourselves, "He doesn't get this country." That's the thing about Obama. Time and again, he does things and says things that are un-American. Not evil. Not anti-American. Just un-American.

President on the trail, is: “going to ask anybody making over $250,000 a year to go back to the tax rates they were paying under Bill Clinton, back when our economy created 23 million new jobs.”

That's great - for a campaign with a motto of "forward". Are they going to compete in a 1990's global economy too. Maybe have an internet boom, dot com and housing bubbles too. Can he get our competitors to set the clock back 20 years too? How about rolling back regulations on businesses 20 years, lol.

Or he could ask his own advisers, the tax increase will cost the economy a couple million jobs.

"extending for one year the Bush tax cuts for families making less than $250,000"

The Obama plan sets the tax rate increase coming problem in motion for a third time, as if the first two didn't do enough damage.

Quite relevant here to this attempted meme of "We just want to go back to what was the case under Clinton" is the existence of various other new taxes since then in addition to the increases in other tax rates.

"The mistake of my first term—couple of years," the president allowed, "was thinking that this job was just about getting the policy right." At times, Obama confessed, he'd forgotten that "the nature of this office is also to tell a story to the American people that gives them a sense of unity and purpose and optimism, especially during tough times." http://reason.com/archives/2012/07/17/obama-descends-into-self-parody

No, Mr. President. The mistake of your first term was policy; you got it wrong.

The flag should never be dipped to any person or thing, unless it is the ensign responding to a salute from a ship of a foreign nation. This is sometimes misreported as a tradition that comes from the 1908 Summer Olympics in London, where countries were asked to dip their flag to King Edward VII: American team flag bearer Ralph Rose did not follow this protocol and teammate Martin Sheridan is often, though apocryphally, stated as proclaiming that "this flag dips before no earthly king."[2] This tradition was codified as early as the 1911 U.S. Army drill regulations.[3]

US Naval traditions allow for flag dipping under certain circumstances. That is when another ship passing dips its flag and then returns it to full staff. At that time, the US ship dips the flag and returns to full staff. No other circumstances exist.

Of course, even though codified in law, there are no penalties for not complying.

The way we normally determine where the Capital is in a state of foreign land is ... ASK THEM.

The Capital of North Korea is ... Pyongyang. How do we know that? They said so.

Israel has declared in Israeli law that Jerusalem is the Capital. How could the Capital be anywhere else? Is Israel a less legitimate nation than North Korea? Less of an ally??

Barack Obama and team don't want to say the longer story. Israel says the Capital is Jerusalem, Israel's enemies object. We the Obama administration side with the enemies on this one. (Bush's fault.)

Life is complicated, foreign policy too, if you don't or can't distinguish between good and evil.

Doug, almost no other country accepts that Jerusalem is the legitimate capital of Israel; it isn't just "Israel's enemies" that object. We have never accepted that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel. Obviously, we as well and all other countries don't think it's a legitimate claim. Nor would we accept North Korea's claim to a city below the 38th parallel as their legitimate capital.

Not following you JDN. You didn't say what is the capital of Israel. In what city is the Knesset? Wouldn't that be the capital? In what country is Jerusalem?

If the right answer is that the capital of Israel is in Tel Aviv, why didn't Jay Carney say that?

It's complicated.

I guess the question is from whose perspective. Israel considers Jerusalem the Capital. Ambassadors have to travel from Tel Aviv or from wherever they have their embassy to Jerusalem to present their papers. Yet, nearly the entire world, friends and enemies of Israel, don't recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Nor does almost any country consider that Jerusalem is entirely in Israel.

As for Jay Carney, perhaps Tel Aviv isn't the capital, but then neither is Jerusalem. So maybe he doesn't know; I don't know, but he knows and I know that the legitimate capital of Israel is not Jerusalem.

You brought up North Korea. Imagine if they crossed the 38th parallel, captured a city using force and declared it their new "capital". Do you really think anyone in the world would honor that except North Korea?

If NK says somewhere other than Pyongyang or outside the country is the Capital of North Korea, it wouldn't be so.

If I have one dog and one cat but then I say my cat is a dog, how many dogs do I now have? Still just 1. Saying a cat is a dog doesn't make it so.

The official seat of the government of Israel is in Jerusalem. Is it not?

You think the President's spokesman does not know that?

"As for Jay Carney, perhaps Tel Aviv isn't the capital, but then neither is Jerusalem. So maybe he doesn't know; I don't know, but he knows and I know that the legitimate capital of Israel is not Jerusalem."

Israel is not a legitimate country so where they locate the official seat of their government is not the capital? Is that what you're thinking? 193 countries in the UN, where else do we not recognize a capital?

If NK says somewhere other than Pyongyang or outside the country is the Capital of North Korea, it wouldn't be so.

Did you read my analogy carefully? I said IF NK invaded and attacked land over the 38th parallel that is not their land (similar to what Israel did) and then declared that the city they conquered is their new "capital" would it be so?

If I have one dog and one cat but then I say my cat is a dog, how many dogs do I now have? Still just 1. Saying a cat is a dog doesn't make it so. Better to say if you have one dog and you stole a neighbor's dog, do you own two dogs? Saying you have two dogs doesn't mean you OWN two dogs.

The official seat of the government of Israel is in Jerusalem. Is it not?Let me correct you; the official seat of the government of Israel is ILLEGALLY in Jerusalem.

You think the President's spokesman does not know that?And yes, the President's spokesman DOES know THAT. It's like if you know you best friend stole something, he's still a good friend, but you don't respect or honor his theft. So like the President's spokesman, you simply don't talk about it.

Wikipedia: "Jerusalem is the capital of Israel..." Wikipedia "..." goes on to say, "though not internationally recognize as such."

JDN, I agreed with you at the beginning, "Perhaps better to give it up". lol.

No, I don't have any best friends who broke into their neighbor's house, stole a major city, car, jewelry, whatever, and are still my best friend, and that isn't what happened, good grief. Why have these threads if you can't or won't read them. Enemies of Israel attacked Israel and lost land in the process. Which part of that was ILLEGAL? Did it happen some other way? Israel is occasionally accused of taking a disproportionate response. I hope so. If you (or Carney or Obama) side with Israel's enemies, just say so. I guess you did.

Israel to you and these others is an illegitimate nation, and the other 192 nations in the UN are fine. Unbelievable. We could pick dozens of examples to show how absurd that is. Why is North Korea a legitimate nation? Did they rightfully acquire the land under their capital? Did the US acquire the land under Washington D.C. through war? Why do we recognize our own country or capital. Considering the anti-border enforcement movement, maybe you don't. Why can't you see Israel is being singled as appeasement to the enemies of Israel, not because they are worse than all 192 others. Why is that right, it isn't, and what did we gain through that policy, nothing.

If you and others side with the enemies of Israel, fine, but then why do we have to hear all the BS about how they are our ally and we stand by them. They are but we don't.

In Oakland, California, the president said "I’m also going to ask anybody making over $250,000 a year to go back to the tax rates they were paying under Bill Clinton, back when our economy created 23 million new jobs, the biggest budget surplus in history and everybody did well.”

ABC News: "This pitch on occasion has meant that President Obama at times sounds as if he’s claiming some ownership of the Clinton economy – referring to “our plan” "

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/07/obama-now-partly-running-on-bill-clintons-record-our-plan/--------------------Bill Clinton cut capital gains taxes, declared that the era of big government is over, ended welfare as we knew it, worked with Republicans co-opting much of their agenda, passed the Reagan-inspired hemisphere-wide free trade agreement, backed away from healthcare when the people rejected it, grew the economy and balanced the budget. What part of that reminds anyone of the Obama agenda or record?

The Foreign Policy of David Axelrodby Fouad Ajami (Senior Fellow and cochair, Working Group on Islamism and the International Order)In the Obama administration, politics trumps grand strategy.

By latest count, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has logged 843,448 miles on the job: She is officially now the most traveled Secretary of State in U.S. history, 102 countries have seen her come and go. In one dispatch, it was breakfast in Vietnam, lunch in Laos, and dinner in Cambodia for our chief diplomat.

In the interim, campaign strategist David Axelrod has stayed close to home, Chicago and Washington, with one notable stop in Boston, where he sought to besmirch the gubernatorial record of Mitt Romney. But the foreign policy of Barack Obama is the foreign policy of David Axelrod. Gone is that hallowed past when the legendary George Marshall observed a strict separation between foreign policy and the political play at home: He had refused to cast a vote in presidential elections and he had bristled when the “political people” in President Truman’s circle of advisors intruded into the foreign policy domain.

We needn’t exalt the past—presidents always worried about the impact of foreign crises on their standing at home. Still, the subordination of foreign policy to the electoral needs of the Obama campaign stands apart in recent American history. Foreign policy has been masterfully neutralized in the Obamian world, taken off the board in this campaign.

Strategic Abdication in Afghanistan & Iraq

The meteoric rise of Barack Obama, the adoring crowds in Paris and Berlin, and the early dispatches from an Islamic world that looked upon him as a kindred spirit, concealed a political man with scant interest in foreign lands. Mr. Obama left the devotees to their own imagination; they read into him what they wished. He had come into office in the aftermath of an uncompromising American nationalist; he held aloft symbols of cosmopolitanism, and a supra-national elite took to him. But the animating drive of his foreign policy was his own quest for power.

Right from the start, he would play the foreign world safe. He had trumpeted Afghanistan as the “good war of necessity,” but he never gave the war his all. This was not Lyndon Johnson haunted by Vietnam, or George W. Bush pressing on in Iraq when all appeared lost in 2006–2007, defying the popular mood, launching a surge in the teeth of a hostile Congress, and a Republican party that had grown uncertain about Iraq.

Barack Obama came up with his own surge in Afghanistan, but he undercut the effort there by announcing a set date for American withdrawal in 2014—two safe years after his bid for reelection. There would be no “heat,” no soaring poetry about Afghanistan.

Early on, President Obama had talked of a “civilian surge” to go along with the additional military force he had dispatched—agricultural specialists, educators, engineers, and lawyers who would tackle the problems of the country from the bottom up in the provinces. By the second year of his presidency, Mr. Obama would say little if anything about the reform of Afghanistan. The early dream of “nation-building” was abandoned. It was well understood that this commander-in-chief was marking time in Afghanistan.

He had his Republican rivals on the horns of a dilemma: They could neither outflank him from the right by calling for more troops and a deeper commitment, nor urge writing off the entire venture as a doomed enterprise. Mission Accomplished, Mr. Obama had inoculated himself on Afghanistan.

The success of Mr. Obama’s (read: Axelrod’s) approach was made manifestly clear in the speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars that Governor Romney made on July 24. Hitherto, Mr. Romney had made the obligatory challenge to the Obama deadline. But he, too, now accepted 2014 as a set date for an American withdrawal. The Taliban needn’t worry: The electoral verdict in November 2012 is of no consequence to them. They could wait out the American presence. The Hamid Karzai reign of plunder and extortion would be ready for the plucking by then.

In the same vein, there were strategic gains secured in Iraq, but Mr. Obama headed for the exits. Politics clashed with strategic interests, and politics prevailed. It was well understood that the Iraqi government was eager for a residual American presence that would give it sufficient time to make its way in the region. Further, it was known that the Iraqis and the American military commanders on the scene had in mind an American force of roughly 20,000 military personnel, or close to it.

But Mr. Obama made the Iraqis an offer they were meant to refuse; a token force of less than 5,000, hardly enough to fend for itself, let alone offer the Iraqis any meaningful protection. Mr. Obama got the result he wanted. His surest applause line, in his acceptance speech this summer, will be the boast that he kept the promise to his base of bringing to an end the American campaign in Iraq.

A Fluke in Libya

Admittedly, Libya was the one exception to this foreign policy of strategic abdication. The Libyans were lucky: This was a solar-lunar eclipse. Mr. Obama had done his best to keep the struggle against Moammar Gaddafi at bay, but David Cameron and Nicolas Sarkozy had taken the plunge into Libya, and American power—decisive in the end—destroyed the Gaddafi dictatorship. Gaddafi had been particularly obtuse: He had stated for the world to hear his intention of bringing death and slaughter to the rebellious city of Benghazi.

Mr. Obama’s reputation was in the scales of history, a mini-Rwanda appeared to be in the offing. Mr. Obama did right by the Libyans. But he tipped his hand. The Obama administration steadfastly refused to celebrate or claim the victory in Libya. That country would be kept at arm’s length, even as a parliamentary election handed a defeat to the Islamists, and went the way of a big secular/tribal coalition headed by a technocrat with an American doctorate. Libya would not be repeated elsewhere, it was a fluke, not a template. No Obama doctrine at work here.

Syria: “We Miss Bush’s Audacity”

The Syrians would come to envy the luck of the Libyans. For seventeen remorseless months, the Syrian people would be subjected to all kinds of cruelties. More than two dozen “torture centers” would mete out to a suffering population unspeakable barbarisms. Over 1,200 children have perished in this pitiless war of a regime against its own population; young children would be brutalized, used as human shields by the convoys of the security forces; benign farming villages would become code names for heartlessness.

“Massacres have become like breakfast to us,” a political activist recently observed. In the face of all this, the Obama policy has been one of total abdication. The Secretary of State has carried out her president’s brief: She has been running out the clock, seeking cover behind the arcane doings of the United Nations Security Council, making it appear as though deliverance hinged on a change in the attitude of Russia at the United Nations. Any “Model UN” high school team would have foreseen the vetoes of Russia—and China—at the Security Council. Truth is that Russian diplomacy has been a convenient alibi for a quiescent American policy.

The sophistry that has gone into arguing that “Syria is not Libya” is unworthy of a great liberal power. Nor can the exquisitely tortured discussions of the “difficult” borders of Syria stand any scrutiny. If anything, those sensitive borders and the spillover of Syria’s troubles and pathologies into Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, and Turkey, should have long tipped the scales in favor of an interventionist Syria policy. There is will—and there are resources—in the region to upend the Syrian dictatorship, for Bashar al-Assad has unleashed a full-scale sectarian war that has unnerved and antagonized his neighbors.

But the world is what it is, and the regional powers await an American green light that has never come. Plainly, an American president boastful that he had quit Iraq can not stand before his “progressive” base and proclaim the assumption of a new burden in Syria.

“The tide of war is receding” is one of the favorite mantras of this administration and its leaders. But what is receding before our eyes is the American influence in the world order. Mr. Obama has narrowed the horizons of a country with historically wide vistas. In the Obamian world, that which can’t be done with drones and the daring of our SEALs is left untended. In a note of exquisite irony, Barack Obama had made much of his predecessor’s poor standing in Islamic lands. Trumpet the polls, fall to them: Mr. Obama’s standing in Egypt, Jordan, and Pakistan, according to the Pew Global Attitudes Survey, is now lower than George W. Bush’s standing. A placard carried by a group of Syrian protesters tells it all: “We miss Bush’s audacity.”

Now it could be that the American people have been made weary by foreign engagements, and that the economic distress—our debt, our deficits, an anemic recovery, persisting high levels of unemployment—has made us reticent in the face of burdens abroad. That would be an irony all its own—a president who mismanaged the economy being rewarded for the lack of confidence his presidency itself has generated.

From the very beginning, Mr. Obama has been a herald of a “declinist” reading of America. We can’t aid the Syrians, our touch would sully them. We can’t identity ourselves with the democratic aspirations of the Iranians, for we must conciliate their rulers. We can’t defend the cause of liberty and freedom, for in that Obamian worldview, freedom is a fragile, uncertain bet the world over.

So our Secretary of State circles the globe, nine countries in thirteen days in one recent expedition. The bet of this president is that the American people will neither notice, nor care about, the erosion of the American ascendency that enabled this country to do good and to do well in the order of nations. Come November, the country will deliver its verdict on this stunted vision of its place in the world.

I caught the last third or so of BO's speech at the UN this morning and I must say I thought he spoke rather well. Instead of harassing youtube to take down the clip, or having the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff call up an outlier Christian preacher to ask him to cool it, or dhimmi statements, he actually spoke rather well in defense of free speech. There were some additional things he said and they sounded nice too-- though feel good fuzziness will not carry the day. That said, for the average voter much of it probably sounded pretty coherent.

We knew it was al Qaida within 24 hours, America was attacked again, and they sent out UN Ambassador Susan Rice to all the Sunday talk shows, I saw 2 or 3 of them, and she dished out the known false company line about a video no one saw and spontaneous crowds etc.

Isn't that the kind of deception they were (falsely) accusing of Bush all through the Iraq war?

We knew it was al Qaida within 24 hours, America was attacked again, and they sent out UN Ambassador Susan Rice to all the Sunday talk shows, I saw 2 or 3 of them, and she dished out the known false company line about a video no one saw and spontaneous crowds etc.

Isn't that the kind of deception they were (falsely) accusing of Bush all through the Iraq war?

Begs the questions, why lie and what else are they lying about?

They are lying about everything. As far as this 9/11 attack, because in 2008 Buraq was marketed to a war-weary American public as the answer to the global jihad. He'd get elected and use his star power to make the seething hatred from the muslim world evaporate with enough groveling.

President Barack Obama attended a fundraiser at Jay-Z's 40/40 Club in Manhattan that featured a champagne tower of 350 bottles worth $105,000 - more than twice the median household income of an American family.The tower of $300-a-bottle Armand de Brignac Brut Gold, known as 'Ace of Spades' because of its label, is a permanent fixture at the club.'It’s floor-to-ceiling gold bottles in the entire space,' a 40/40 representative told the New York Post. 'It’s beautiful—breathtaking. It’s the first thing you see when you walk in.'The median income for an American family was $51,413 in 2011.